M3 (working title) by Jyrms

[raw]
made by Jyrms for LD 42 (COMPO)

Introduction

I've done a bunch of Ludum Dares in jam mode but this is my first time doing compo. I made a simple match 3 game.

Instructions

Use left and right arrows to move from column to column and up and down arrows to shift the current column. Any run of 3 or more of the same color in a column scores you points.

Technical notes

I built the engine from scratch using HTML5 canvas 2D context. Wrote the whole thing in CoffeeScript.

Created the music and sound effects using LMMS and some default instrument samples included therein.

Building from source

The source code is included so you can build the game yourself using NPM.

sh npm i npm run build npm run serve

And then point your browser to localhost:8080

Ratings

Overall 437th 3.25⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Fun 317th 3.318⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 80th 3.795⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Theme 264th 3.75⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 608th 2.568⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Audio 389th 2.818⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Given 29🗳️ 1🗨️

Feedback

shp
15. Aug 2018 · 19:16 UTC
Interesting idea for the controls, haven't seen a match 3 game like this before! a bit unintuitive at first though
ildfuglen
15. Aug 2018 · 19:18 UTC
This is an insanely creative game, I've never seen anything like it. You've got some serious creativity. The gameplay was difficult, and the graphics and audio were fairly simplistic, but this is the kind of game, if polished, that I believe would do well as a mobile game!

Amazing job on this, keep up the good work and hoping to see more from you next ludum dare!
AFlatThrasher
15. Aug 2018 · 19:21 UTC
A very neat idea. A bit hard to purposefully set up matches, but that is the type of thing that might come with a bit more practice. Unique little puzzle game.
Leeloo
15. Aug 2018 · 19:42 UTC
I like it, but it is a bit too difficult. I think the speed could be a bit slower, at least in the beginning. It is a lot confusing in the beginning, but it makes sense. Although it makes my head hurt a little. It is almost a mix between tetris and a rubic cube. Nice job.
acdimalev
15. Aug 2018 · 22:01 UTC
Conceptually very interesting. The audio and visuals are minimal, but nice. Good music!

The controls are fairly frustrating... new blocks and rotations are always at odds with each other, and I'm never completely sure which one is going to win out.

Smooth sliding on the cursor also feels inappropriate here. It's at odds with new blocks and rotations, but I can't see any reason that it has to be. Have you tried having the cursor move left/right without the smooth transition / without limiting how quickly it can move?

The last thing I'm going to say about the controls is a nitpick, but you might be surprised how much influence this little detail has on how responsive the controls feel. The game is responding to keypresses on key-up, not on key-down. I highly recommend swapping that around.

I was a little curious about how much impact my gameplay has on the overall score at the end of the game, so I let it run through eight times to get a feel for what the "default score" of the game looks like.

28, 15, 15, 9, 25, 6, 21, 45

My current high score: 91

Pretty sure my high score will be beat out by just restarting the game enough times. But I'm curious to see what strategies people come up with for this.

Very cool. Awesome work!
mikethewayne
20. Aug 2018 · 12:59 UTC
Fantastic game, it's a simple concept, yet it matches the theme perfectly! It was fun to play, easy to figure out what to do, and had reasonably entertaining music. It would be nice to get extra score if you manage to get a horizontal line of the same colour, which I managed to do in the hope of extra score, but maybe that's not what you were after?

Overall, a brilliant, complete game that I thoroughly enjoyed playing!
tobiasvl
20. Aug 2018 · 13:44 UTC
Wow, this is hard. I love the concept, it's not often you see new ideas in the "match three" genre! I also think it would be better if the movement was immediate and not smooth. More responsive, and also more fitting to the aesthetic. However, the movement of the blocks when the rows move kinda has to be smooth, otherwise it's too disorienting. If you want to keep the animations consistent, maybe speed up the cursor movement a bit (a lot)? But good job!
Paulie B
20. Aug 2018 · 22:37 UTC
Finally I've found a fellow canvas user. Pretty cool game, similar to tetris and candy crush but innovative at the same time. I would suggest that you accept horizontal matches but that my make the game too easy, experiment with it.
Tornquist
25. Aug 2018 · 20:41 UTC
This is a creative match 3 game, but unfortunately it was difficult for me to play. The left and right keys were scrolling the window as well as the on screen controls.
LastLeaf
03. Sep 2018 · 09:27 UTC
Great tweak on the match-3 game! Interesting and innovative! It is difficult but I guess it will not be fun if not hard enough (considering easy/hard mode?). Audio is great! About graphics, well, I felt it was hard to distinguish red/orange blocks on my screen (I am using new surface pro). It would be much better if the graphics well designed. Overall nice job!